


We Can't Go Back

by Spinning Place (buttercups3)



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: F/M, Sex, War Trauma, spoilers 5.04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-15
Updated: 2014-10-15
Packaged: 2018-02-21 07:13:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2459486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttercups3/pseuds/Spinning%20Place
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An hour after Mary gives Tony the bad news, he returns to his office, brain muddling together their conversation at Kensington Gardens, his naval service, and their week together in Liverpool, as he tries to make sense of this rejection and comes up short.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Can't Go Back

Tony rotates the cold, cylindrical metal of pen between fingertips and desk: _plop-roll-plop_. The receipts in front of him blur, recalling oil sludge on foam as the belching dreadnoughts of his past seamed opaque sea. If he merely thinks it, he can smell it—tar, salt, smoke. Just don’t hear it; the sinking of such vast vessels emits a crunching, wrenching _woosh_ , waters opening up to swallow paperdoll-sailors whole. Heaving up the survivors, only some of them still have faces. The rest are black burns, seared red meat. It could put you off animal flesh forever, and for a while, it did.

_\--I’m just not sure we have enough in common to make a go of things._

What _haven’t_ they in common to be honest? Bone-raking personal loss, the dissolution of patriarchy for better and for worse, their very childhoods, let alone estates and titles… What else could there possibly be? Humor? He’s made her laugh countless times— _he_ , when others hadn’t seen her teeth in half a year. Politics? They’re both pragmatists, progressive without scorning their roots.

 _\--Am I a bad lover?_ He cringes hard enough to choke on spit…

…his arms covering hers, all silky smoothness and light hair, their fingers tangled, palm to palm, his callouses from ropes, metal, guns long since reabsorbed. He can touch her without encumbrance. Why does hand in hand feel most intimate? As intimate as him thrusting into her, her body hugging him warm, muscles carefully cradling the part of him that’s most vulnerable; he’s so grateful he could cry. But he doesn’t want to agitate her. _She_ cried their first night together, the ghost of Matthew perhaps fleeing its final vestige in her. So instead, lowering his forehead against hers, sweat and determination binding them, he whispers feelingly, “I love you.”

Lines pinch her forehead. It could be that he’s hurting her, wantonly slamming into her sensitive core, so he freezes just in case: “Mary.”

“No, don’t stop.” A warm leg kicks over his and plunges him deeper, both of them gasping at the slam into her diaphragm.

Withdrawing again, his lips turn up at her straight line of frustrated brow. “Not stopping,” he pants, “Can we turn over?”

A shuffle allows Tony to settle sharp angles and ridges along the graceful curves of her spine and bum, a mosaic of hard and soft fused. By the time he threads himself back into the heat of her, tighter from this angle, she’s grinding against the hand she’s tucked away beneath her pelvis. Brushing lush curls from her shoulders, he gently kisses the creamy triangle of unveiled flesh, dipping inside her long and deep.

“Harder,” she pleads with her cheek to the pillow, eyes squeezed shut, and so he complies but not without concern; it’s getting raw even for him. Still she insists, _Harder, harder_ , and it dawns on him that she’s trying to forget something. _Oh Mary, darling._

Slipping back out, he urges her onto her side and hooks in two long fingers to beckon against the rough patch within, thumb brushing the wet, tangle of curls till his arm stiffens. Head flung back, she cries out, and he holds her shivering, his own need forgotten between them.

“Tony?”

He gathers her to his chest, sticky, hot. “Hm?”

Muffled: “Love you, too.”

Heart thudding loud and painful where her cheek is laid, he almost thanks her but thinks the better of it. Instead, he kisses her hair and buries his nose in the sweet waves…

_\--I refuse to believe that a woman like you—a lady—could give herself to a man without first being certain that he was the one._

Cruel—he was cruel. Mary’s not been certain of anything; it’s always been him that is sure of her. It’s the rest of his life that is poorly drawn, hazy.

On a leaf of stationery, he scrawls:

_Dear Mary,_

_Please accept my apology for how deplorably I behaved at Kensington Gardens. I was--_

You broke me, darling. You broke everything, and I don’t know why. You wouldn’t even say. Aren’t I owed some explanation? His eyes sting with the budding of tears. No. Not at work.

… lowering into a polished, claw-foot tub— _My God, she likes it scalding_ —her skin glowing rosy, steam rising from her fetching stomach. As she settles back into him, his hand slides up the soft hill of breast and squeezes gently. Her lips turn up; he’s always so desperate to touch her. Five days together, and he’s barely let go for a moment. A sleek thigh bends out of the water as she washes between her legs where they’ve recently made love, an odd incongruity with what she says:

“I should have called George this week. I fear I haven’t been quite the mother he’s needed”—such a genuine, vulnerable declaration that his lungs twist for her.

“Nonsense,” Tony unpeels a wet curl from her cheek. “I see you with him. You’re a sincere and compassionate mother.”

“You wouldn’t have thought so those first six months after his father died.”

After Tony’s father passed, he couldn’t feel anything for weeks. So unlike him, he had to pretend he was Joseph—the eldest, the practical one. Pretend he did. Lord Gillingham. Constrictive, cold ring on his pinky. He didn’t know himself at all. Oddly, though, Lady Grantham seemed to know him. She walked right up to him at the funeral, pressing warm lips against his cheek as if she came from another world where the sun still shone and flowers bloomed. She’d smelt of roses and dew; isn’t that strange?

“Children mend, Mary, quicker than we do. They’re simple really,” Tony sniffs, as a droplet of condensation falls from the tip of his nose. “They just want to be loved. And you love George. He’s your first thought in every decision you make.”

His fingers nestle beside hers in her tangled hair, together working coconut oil into her scalp.

“I’d so love to have a daughter,” he blurts honestly. “I envy your father his girls.” The truth aches before it’s even left his lips.

Tensing, brushing away his hands, Mary ducks under the water to rinse, chestnut hair splaying out and briefly winding about his wrists. A mermaid caught in his net…

“Mr. Foyle?” comes Irene’s voice from the other side of the door. He’s insisted that his secretary call him by his real name. Lord Gillingham does him no good at work.

He wipes his eyes and sniffs. “Come in, Irene.”

“I… oh.”

God, he must look frightful. Heat colors his cheeks, and he becomes unreasonably brusque in his urgency to be alone.

“What is it?”

Her red hair is coiled neatly into a bun, freckles perversely cheerful in the slanting light from his window.

“I wanted to remind you that you’re to have tea with Mr. Haynes at four o’clock. Do you wish me to cancel?”

“And why would I want that?” He is simply incapable of not being an ass today. “Forgive me, Irene. I’m not quite my- No, no. I must see John before he leaves for India.”

“Sir, can I get you something? Some tea perhaps?”

“No, thank you. That’ll be all.”

Despite her attempt at gentle retreat, the _thud_ of the door jars him; his mouth goes cotton dry. Slumping down on his arms, he inadvertently wrinkles the paper beneath.

… sweaty, shivering, twisted in sheets, he’s dimly aware of his own moaning. Mary is pinning his hands.

“Tony! Wake up. Please stop.”

At first he’s too confused to be embarrassed. There were brains on his hands—brains grey as the Cimbrian sky. He’d been trying to plug a gap in a gunner’s skull with his bare palm, dumbfounded. Idiotic.

“I…” he tries to explain to Mary that he’s sorry—he shouldn’t have touched the man’s insides with his soot-smeared fingers. She’s only coming into focus now, eyes shimmering black in the night. She loosens her grip on his hands, still shaking and cold.

“Were you dreaming of battle?” she inquires matter-of-factly. “It sounded as though you were issuing orders.”

“I… I don’t remember. I’m sorry I woke you,” he mutters thickly.

“You’re entitled to nightmares after what you’ve been through. Matthew had them. I’m used to it.”

Her words rattle around in the murkiness of sleep and memory, his nerves peaked but his mind still shrouded. Entitled? He seems to have inherited quite a lot he never wanted. Used to it? Still unaccustomed to peace, he remains a problem to be endured...

From his careless elbow, the pen drops to the floor with a _smack_ all out of proportion to its size. It doesn’t break, though, the indestructible little bugger. He almost wishes it would. Shattering would be more fitting. This sounds too much like the dull ache of his heart, his own denial.

_\--So what are you saying?_

_\--Simply that this is something that we’ve got to get through, and we will. We will get through this together._

Maybe he is being unreasonable but so, too, is she. Something happened in Liverpool—whether he alarmed her or she alarmed herself.

_Dear Mary,_

_Please accept my apology for how deplorably I behaved at Kensington Gardens. I was confused and upset, but that is no excuse for boorishness. We must talk in person and sort this out. You must let me see you at Downton. My life is on hold until we meet again._

_Yours,_

_Tony_


End file.
